Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko and Toni Morrison traveled together through China 26 years ago. Monday night at 92Y, the three women reunited. Kingston read from her memoir “I Love a Broad Margin to My Life,” and Silko from her book “The Turquoise Ledge.” Morrison introduced the women, who each took an hour to read and discuss their works, which were influenced by that trip.

But before the main event began, there was a smaller, more intimate conversation. Gathered around half-dozen boxes of pizza, Kingston and Silko talked with 15 high school kids about their writing. The meeting was part of the 92Y’s Poetry Center School’s Project, which matches a guest teacher from 92Y with high school kids. Together they read and debate specific living authors and their work, then the kids have a chance to meet the authors in the flesh at 92Y.

Both books deal with cultural identity, one on what it means to be Chinese-American, the other other, a straddling of the natural and spiritual worlds. The writers cheerily spoke to the students, each eager to please the other. But after the slices and soda were digested, the two women headed backstage to greet Morrison, a Nobel Laureate.

“Oh Toni!” “Oh Leslie!” “Maxine!” It was as if a choir was rejoicing as the old friends embraced backstage. In the minutes before they prepared to take the stage, the three women spoke in half-sentences, able to simultaneously understand and complete one another’s thoughts.

“My book folded time into time, just like you think,” Kingston said to Morrison, as she told her the story of the three of them on a boat in the Li river in China all those years ago. “There was a woman bent over washing or fishing and Toni you waved and looked over and said “Goodbye Maxine, Goodbye Maxine.”

“Yes,” Morrison said soothingly.

“Toni sees a painting when she writes,” Kingston told Speakeasy. “She sees lines of red over there and green and blue dots up here and white down there. That’s how she works, that’s how I work,” added the 65-year-old poet/writer, whose won a National Book Critics Circle Award for “The Woman Warrior” and a National Book Award for “China Men.”

She further explained that her book is laid out like a Chinese scroll, a journey with no real beginning, middle and end: more of a walkabout than a planned trip. She spoke in a soft but evocative whisper unlike her friend Silko who spoke in bursts, moving seamlessly from reptiles to Arizona politics.

Silko’s memoir, “The Turquoise Ledge” is her first nonfiction work that she described as “a self-portrait from the inside.” But Silko, whose eyelashes followed her heartbeat in both timing and rapidity, feverishly spoke, leaving no time for questions. In a stream of consciousness, she agreed with Kingston on her confluence of time, nearly wept over the soothsaying nature of her book “Almanac of the Dead,” and documented her life in “the belly of the beast” or her home, Tuscon, Ariz.

“The day that Gabrielle Gifford was shot I thought it was the uprising of the right wing. If it was they were going to shoot everything and I knew I couldn’t go out,” said Silko. “Although [the alleged shooter] turned out to be that troubled boy, the U.S. is in a humanitarian crisis.”

The women, still buzzing in one another’s presence, were shuttled from the green room to the photography area to backstage. They were gracious, Kingston giving way to Silko giving way to Morrison, who walked onstage to introduce the two.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.